(Hopefully) Daily Journal | Day One

 Alright, let's see how this goes.

In my seemingly impossibly daunting quest of becoming a writer, I find myself struggling to come up with things to write about. My main goal is screenwriting but I think a great first step is to just write. I hoped simply jotting down thoughts and feelings stream of consciousness style would be a good way to get the ball rolling but I am now realizing it's more difficult than I anticipated. I'm looking at my open document and I see that there is A LOT of empty space to fill. I imagine this is a rather common issue among creative types. There's just so much goddamn space left and I'm supposed to fill it all with words and sentences and paragraphs and OH boy it is very intimidating. To help combat the fear I'm trying to tell myself that I can't stop typing for longer than a minute. This will (in theory) help motivate my brain and hands to keep moving to get thoughts onto page. Most of my entries will likely be very scatterbrain and nonsensical, but at least it's something. I'm WRITING so I suppose that makes me a WRITER. Good first start. 

Okay, so my day has been pretty uneventful so far. I've spent the vast majority of it sitting in bed on my laptop searching the internet for writing programs and communities to be a part of. A good portion spent learning basics of screenwriting, finding helpful tips and tricks on the process, and examples of scripts and log lines and the whatnot. I did stumble across a a treatment script for Avatar that I read a small portion of and I found it very fascinating. Blue space-people Avatar, not really bad M Night Shyamalan Avatar. We don't talk about that Avatar. It was interesting to see how many changes are made in the process. For instance, in the rough draft seeming treatment, the main character was named Josh instead of Jake. That threw me for a bit of a loop at first but then I started to notice other small differences from the final product and I turned around to it. It was almost like viewing a completely different film in my imagination. James Cameron has a really nifty way of describing everything and I quite enjoyed it. I might have to go back and watch the film now to see everything that really changed.

I'm a little more confident in my ability to fill out large documents now. I stopped thinking about that goal while writing about Avatar and boy would you look at that. I've written two paragraphs already and I've started a third. It's amazing what can be done when you stop worrying about how s**t you might actually be at what you like. And just like that I've discovered the secret to successful creative endeavors.

I've never been one to care or think much about what other people think about me. I was bullied as a young boy and at a certain point I started to understand why others were so mean to me and thought I was a piece of s**t. I realized that I WAS a piece of s**t. I still do believe I am. More on that another time, I imagine. Other's perception of me never hurts me because I can guarantee I've had harsher thoughts about myself. I'm my own worst critic and my greatest enemy. I don't want to create to impress or gain the respect of others. I want to prove to myself that I CAN do cool things and that I might be worth something after all. I have a lot of ideas that I think are pretty nifty and cool and I'd like to get them out of my head and onto a screen. At least on paper on in a text document. That's the part I really struggle with. 

The motivation to sit down and take the time to flesh everything out and make something people would like to watch. It's a long, frustrating process and I'm apparently not patient enough to see it through. I'd like to work on that. 

I've tried to think of what else to put in here and my mind just isn't cooperating. I'm going to call this good here and say "f**k it" and post this bad boy. It doesn't matter if anyone likes it or even if anyone reads it. What matters is that I wrote something and put it out there. Cool, go me. I've published a work. 

Reviews

[Olivier Vintois]

You could download the scenario of a movie that you like. It would show you how it is done, and above all how it is laid out and presented. You could then try your hand at writing a very short scenario for a story you know well : Little Red Riding Hood, for instance, then go on to more ambitious tasks.